Call for Papers

Written By Rene Brauer

Special issue: Geographies of Knowledge

Journal: Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education (Peter Lang)

Guest editors: Mirek Dymitrow (mirek.dymitrow@lnu.se) & Rene Brauer (rene.brauer@lnu.se)

SCOPE

Higher education institutions are central sites where knowledge is anchored, produced, taught, evaluated, and recognized. Yet the spatial and geographical conditions under which knowledge acquires legitimacy, utility, and authority are rarely examined systematically. This special issue proposes geographies of knowledge as a field of inquiry that brings together two inseparable dimensions:

  • Geographies, understood as spatial and geographical perspectives through which societies are analyzed, where place, location, scale, and spatial relations matter.

  • Knowledge, understood here as socially processed information that has acquired legitimacy, utility, and often authority.

In this context, universities – and by extension higher education – occupy a unique role in processes of legitimization, the effects of which can influence society in a wide range of subtle ways (e.g. Brauer et al. 2025). Philosophically and theoretically, bringing these dimensions together, the special issue advances a geo-epistemic perspective, in which knowledge is never placeless or neutral but always produced, validated, and extended through specific spatial, material, institutional, and relational arrangements (Malecki 2010). Knowledge is anchored in locations and systems yet often claims relevance or authority “elsewhere”, across regions, nations, and even planetary scales (Canaparo, 2009).

HERE, the geographies of knowledge draw on spatial theory, including an understanding of space as a concept in which the perceived (physical and material), the conceived (ideological and representational), and the lived (experiential and symbolic) intertwine (Lefebvre, [1991] 2014). Accordingly, this issue emphasizes that knowledge and access to knowledge are spatially stratified. No single actor or institution can grasp the totality of knowledge; yet universities and higher education institutions must interact, coordinate, and legitimize knowledge across sites.

THERE is a central tension for the geographies of knowledge philosophically, within the context of the university and higher education, namely that decision-making proceeds in the absence of epistemic totality and is spatially differentiated. Put differently, no single knowledge regime can legitimately claim epistemological primacy, and the validity of these knowledge regimes vary depending upon locality. Nevertheless, due to the requirement of legitimation within this discursive space that is the university, even small decisions have far-reaching consequences, precisely because they are continuously done without full knowledge of their consequences, in times of crisis or not.

TOPICS AND QUESTIONS

Papers may explore both the here of knowledge production and the there of recognition, circulation, and impact, including the emergent properties that arise when teaching, research, funding, evaluation, policy, and societal engagement are combined at scale. Possible points of entry may be:

  • Spatial stratification of knowledge: how the value, legitimacy, and authority of knowledge vary depending on where it is produced, and how location shapes what is recognized as “good” research or teaching.

  • Local systems and global claims: how locally anchored knowledge becomes aggregated, universalized, or mobilized across contexts, and what unintended consequences, synergies, or tensions emerge in the process.

  • Material and infrastructural dimensions: how funding systems, evaluation regimes, publishing infrastructures, and digital platforms anchor and stratify knowledge spatially.

  • Language, translation, and circulation: how dominant languages and publication venues shape the movement of knowledge across sites of recognition and authority.

  • Policy mobility and spatial imaginaries: how ideas such as “excellence,” “impact,” or “world-class universities” travel between contexts and reorganize institutional priorities and practices.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

  • Submissions may be conceptual, theoretical, methodological, or empirical.

  • All contributions should engage explicitly with higher education as a site of knowledge production, teaching, governance, and evaluation.

  • Authors are encouraged to make clear how knowledge is anchored, stratified, extended, or constrained spatially, and to reflect on both intended and unintended effects of institutional arrangements.

  • Conceptual and meta-perspective papers should advance or critically reflect on geo-epistemic or spatial frameworks relevant to higher education research.

IMPORTANT DATES

  • Abstract submission: 15 February 2026

  • Notification of acceptance: 22 February 2026

  • Full manuscript due: 12 April 2026

  • Revised manuscript due: 15 June 2026

Inquiries and submissions: Mirek Dymitrow (mirek.dymitrow@lnu.se) and Rene Brauer (rene.brauer@lnu.se)

REFERENCES

Brauer, R., Björn i., Burgess G., Dymitrow, M., Greenman, J., Grzelak-Kostulska, E., Pöllänen, P. & Williams, T., (2025) The impact of impact: an invitation to philosophise. Minerva (2025): 1-28.

Canaparo, C. (2009). Geo-epistemology: Latin America and the location of knowledge (Vol. 23). Peter Lang.

Lefebvre, H. ([1991] 2014). The production of space). In The people, place, and space reader (pp. 289-293). Routledge.

Malecki, E. J. (2010). Everywhere? The geography of knowledge. Journal of Regional Science, 50(1), 493-513.

Rene Brauer
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